


Nobody Knows

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Family, Gen, Harm to Children, Maternal Urges, Police, Psychological Trauma, Sexual Tension, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:51:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dedicated police officer stumbles across the black secret at the heart of a golden family. Does the relationship between Tommen Baratheon’s mother and uncle have any relevance to his disappearance? Can Detective Brienne Tarth ignore it even if it doesn’t?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody Knows

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who read and liked Ball and Chain/Golden and True, please be aware that this is NOT set in that ‘verse. Apparently I have a massive kink for cop!Brienne, but this time I really wanted to explore the implications of the Lannistercest (and its offspring) on the evolution of the relationship between Jaime and Brienne. Along the way, I completely ignored real police and court procedure to suit my story. This fic touches on abduction, abuse and death of children (not graphically, I gave this an M rating primarily because the subject is a delicate one) – so please do not read if that might upset you!
> 
> In this AU, Brienne is in her late twenties/early thirties, the Lannister twins are in their early forties, Joffrey is nineteen, Myrcella is fifteen, and Tommen is ten. 
> 
> The title and the anecdote on which it draws are an actual thing from Han Dynasty China, called the Four Wisdoms. Certain lines have been shamelessly lifted from show!canon and twisted to my own purpose. I own nothing.

When she made detective, Brienne was told that the key to good police work was keeping up with paperwork and not becoming emotionally involved in cases. In her experience, this is true as far as it goes, but for her the real key is having a good cry every once in a while. Not where anyone can see, of course. Brienne is not the sort to get drunk and weepy in a bar or to cry on her father’s shoulder. She prefers to do her crying at home, far from prying eyes. It is inelegant and more than a little embarrassing ( _she really_ should _be able to let things just slide off_ ), but it got her through her time in Vice, and is sometimes just plain necessary since she transferred to Major Incidents. Anyway, she tells herself sternly in moments of weakness, had she wanted a less stressful profession, she would have become a bookkeeper.

Her latest case promises to be one of those which will end with her hugging a pillow and sniffling wetly in the wee hours of the morning. Child abductions usually are. 

Brienne remembers her first case involving a child as she sits in Cersei Baratheon’s kitchen with her notepad open on her knee. Arya Stark was a ten-year-old who had a fight with her mother one day and decided to teach her parents a lesson by running away. Dead babies, Brienne’s old partner Goodwin used to call such cases. _You never forget your first dead baby_ , he told her when he saw how pale and shaken Brienne was after their visit to the morgue, as though he knew she would cry herself to sleep that night, and gave her his blessing. 

She is completely focused on the case at hand, but the Stark girl’s small, skinny body, made smaller still once laid out on the autopsy table, is etched into her consciousness, a constant background to the Baratheon family’s unfolding horror. In Brienne’s memory, the morgue is awash in a blue, watery light, and she knows she is remembering something else. Something she cannot afford to remember just then, superimposing it onto Arya Stark’s lifeless body, pale and cold as a beached fish. 

“He would not just run away,” Mrs. Baratheon insists, her pretty face glacially calm, only her manicured hands ( _red nails, very subtle_ ) revealing what she must be feeling as they fiddle with her coffee cup, her lighter, a crumpled magazine. “Tommen is a good boy, a happy boy. I have told him repeatedly never to accept rides or food from strangers.”

Tommen Baratheon is blond like his mother and smiling in the picture that sits on the kitchen table between the two women. He is the same age Arya Stark was. Brienne restrains the urge to stroke his plump, cheerful face with her finger as she goes over the usual questions. Problems at school, problems at home. Emotional problems due to the death of his father. 

“That was over two years ago,” Cersei Baratheon says, fixing Brienne with a scornful look. “You should be asking about the people who hate my family, _detective_. The feud with the Targaryens goes back to my late father’s time. And the Tyrells have had an eye on Lannister Inc.’s holdings for years. They would stop at nothing to weaken our position.” 

It does not seem to occur to her that the culprit might be someone who had dealings with her late husband. The elder son, Joffrey, inherited one third of Stag Enterprises, and his paternal uncles are known to generate enough rivalries all on their own. Kidnapping, though. Bit of a tall order. Nor is Brienne the only one who thinks so. 

“Mother, you do not honestly think Margaery Tyrell had Tommen kidnapped in order to bring down the price of our shares, do you?” Myrcella Baratheon looks like a softer, teenage version of her mother as she hovers in the doorway, her bare feet scuffing the floor. The raw puffiness of the skin around her eyes does nothing to diminish her tender beauty. “Anyway,” she continues quickly as her mother turns to her, “Tommen does miss Papa terribly…”

“Myrcella,” her mother cuts her off, “go to your room and let me speak to Detective Tarth in peace.” 

“Actually,” Brienne jumps in, grateful for the opening. “I do need to take a look at Tommen’s room. Maybe Myrcella could show me.”

Cersei fails to see how her son’s toys and comic books could possibly help, but she waves Brienne and Myrcella away, a queen dismissing troublesome subjects. As Brienne climbs the stairs she can hear Cersei snapping at the Family Liaison Officer to stop brewing so much damned coffee, she wants her son back, not to spend the rest of the week without any sleep. 

“You think he ran away, don’t you?” Myrcella says quietly as they reach the top of the stairs. “He didn’t take anything from his room, I already looked.” 

“I believe you, Myrcella, but I have to look anyway.” Brienne wishes she could offer the girl more reassurance or, failing that, comfort. But she knows better than to make promises about events which are out of her control, and offering a friendly hug is out of the question. 

The wall facing the top of the stairs in Cersei Baratheon’s McMansion is covered in family photographs. Tommen at all ages since babyhood. Myrcella in her Halloween princess costume and her lacrosse uniform and her junior-prom dress. A sullen-looking boy who must be Joffrey has pride of place in a large group portrait, dressed in a high-school graduation cap and gown, his siblings beaming beside him, a slim, good-looking blond man’s arm around his shoulders. 

“Is this your father?” Brienne asks, indicating the man. “You all look like him.”

Myrcella titters. It warms Brienne’s heart to hear it, even if the girl’s misery only lifts for a fleeting moment. “People always say that, it’s funny. No, that’s my uncle Jaime. There’s a picture of my dad in Tommen’s room.” 

If his room is anything to go by, Tommen’s main interests in life are soccer and cats. Brienne remembers seeing a litter box in the kitchen, but no cat. The poor thing is probably hiding somewhere to escape the stress in the house, maybe missing its young owner. A cursory inspection of the room suggests Myrcella was right: the only things missing are the clothes and schoolbag Tommen had with him when he disappeared. 

Myrcella passes Brienne a framed photograph from the top of the bookcase. “This was taken a few months before Dad’s accident,” she says, indicating a large, florid man with a black beard, laughing heartily as he swings a squealing, delighted Tommen high in the air, the summer day golden and soft as amber around their fishing boat. 

Brienne stares at the picture, questions unspooling in her mind, questions which have little or nothing to do with Tommen’s disappearance. Unless…

“May I borrow this?” she asks Myrcella. “I should really ask your mother, but Tommen seems to have granted you the privilege to enter his room without asking.”

Myrcella grins at that, says that of course, it’s fine, she has pictures of Tommen and her father in her own room. 

_In her room_ , Brienne thinks. In her room, in Tommen’s room. Not in the living room or the kitchen or on the big wall of family photographs. Come to think of it, who keeps family pictures tucked away in the private part of the house, the part that casual visitors rarely see? A woman as vain as Cersei Baratheon would surely want to display her beautiful children before the whole world. 

Brienne knows it is not her place to judge Cersei, the woman is a witness and the mother of a missing child, but somehow she cannot believe Mrs. Baratheon is so grief-stricken she cannot stand to see her late husband’s face around the house.

“Myrcella, I know this is hard, but can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Tommen?” Brienne asks. “Or hurt your mother by taking him?”

Myrcella shakes her head, blond curls catching the sunlight. “Everyone loves Tommen,” she says with absolute sincerity. Coming from her, Brienne believes it. 

When she asks if maybe the older brother might have any ideas, Myrcella’s face tells her everything she needs to know about young Joffrey even before the girl speaks. “Joff doesn’t like Tommen, but he doesn’t like anyone. I don’t think he cares enough to notice if anyone would want to hurt us.” 

_And his mother is fine with that_ , Brienne thinks as Myrcella escorts her downstairs. Cersei mentioned she urged Joffrey to stay on at university until there were more developments. _Priorities all sorted in this family._

Mothers hurt their children, often, Brienne knows. Abuse them, kill them, violate them. Yet Cersei Baratheon does not seem the type. Why would she throw it all away on one act of violence, when she can get years of vicarious emotional fulfillment from playing favorites, raising up one of her children at the expense of the other two? 

Cersei barely acknowledges Brienne’s leave-taking, a bottle of scotch sitting open next to her coffee cup. Brienne tells the Family Liaison Officer to try and prevent her from getting too drunk, in case someone calls about a ransom. Then she goes to interview Jaime Lannister at the headquarters of his family company. 

Afterward, Brienne has to go over her notes several times in order to remember exactly what he said in the interview. The gist is that he is close to his sister’s family, can think of no one who would want to harm sweet little Tommen (nor does he buy his sister’s theory about unscrupulous business rivals), and has no firm alibi for the time of his nephew’s disappearance. Myrcella was at lacrosse practice, Cersei was at home, Joffrey was – it turns out later – failing a freshman math exam, and Jaime Lannister was… nowhere particular. Driving around. He does that sometimes, when time permits. 

Brienne stares at him across his desk, and wants very much to cross her legs. The photo she saw at Cersei Baratheon’s house only began to do him justice. Jaime Lannister is easily the most attractive man Brienne has ever clapped eyes on, and this is a problem. For one thing, she knows she is a sucker for a pretty face, and she cannot have that in the middle of an investigation. For another, he just told her not only the most bald-faced lie she has yet heard in her career, but the stupidest one as well. Surely he realizes such an inept story places him right at the top of her list of suspects. 

Brienne asks him about the late Robert Baratheon. 

“He was my sister’s husband,” comes the cool reply. “Also a serial philanderer and an idiot. He did everyone a favor when he drowned.”

Brienne carefully does not react to that last statement. “What about Mr. Baratheon’s relationship with his children?”

Jaime shrugs. “He liked them well enough, the way he liked his boat and his shiny cars. They were toys, an amusement. I hope you’re not suggesting Robert came back from the dead to kidnap his son, detective?” 

He gives her a smile which will stay with her, both condescending and come-hither, a palpable presence on her skin. It is a sharper version of Myrcella’s smile. His eyes are the exact green as Tommen’s, and his face when he gets bored or annoyed looks just like Joffrey in the graduation picture. He, his twin sister, her children – all from the same mold, like a set of 1950s dolls meant to teach girls how to be good mothers and housewives. 

Brienne does not blurt out the question that has been niggling at her since she left Cersei Baratheon’s house. That niggling rose to an insistent, irritating scratch at the back of her mind when he fed her that bullshit story about just driving around the morning Tommen disappeared. Brienne asks another question instead, a blunt blow to break up the tension: “Did you have anything to do with Tommen’s disappearance, Mr. Lannister?”

The smile barely wavers before it turns shark-like. “No, I didn’t. Good day to you, _Detective_ Tarth.” He emphasizes her title in the exact same tone his sister used, as though he would gladly replace it with a choicer epithet. Yet Brienne’s insides did not go all fluttery in Cersei Baratheon’s presence, even before she went up to Tommen’s room and saw the family pictures. She can feel Jaime’s eyes on her as she walks away, tells the small thrill that kindles in her stomach to die down immediately. 

That afternoon, Brienne interviews Joffrey Baratheon via Skype. If his mother gives off the aura of an ice queen, and his uncle one of slightly salacious knowingness, young Joffrey displays all the empathy and kindness of a lamprey. Brienne feels the need to wash her hands when she ends the interview, not because of anything the kid did or said, but because of his total disregard either for the danger his younger brother might be in or for his family’s suffering. Yet, unless he hired someone to snatch Tommen from the street, Joffrey has the math professor who caught him cheating as his alibi. 

While other detectives follow up Cersei’s idea that the Lannisters’ business rivals had a hand in Tommen’s disappearance, Brienne takes out the photograph she took from Tommen’s room. Jaime Lannister’s face floats in the back of her mind, mocking, beautiful as a siren’s song, while she studies the faces in the picture: the blond, happy boy, the smiling, black bear of a man. Genetic fluke or genetic logic? 

Following her hunch, she looks into Robert Baratheon’s marriage and death. She finds a couple of lacunae which might be nothing or might be everything. Like the fact that Joffrey was born barely six months after Robert married Cersei, yet Robert had spent several years beforehand living in South Africa, and so far as Brienne can establish Cersei never visited him there. Or the fact that Robert got his first fishing boat when he was sixteen, yet fell off his boat and drowned during a fairly mild autumn storm. Of course, Joffrey could have been conceived during one of Robert’s visits home. Robert could have slipped and fallen overboard in the squall, or gotten tipsy and fallen. 

Brienne is not sure she buys any of those possibilities. 

On her way to Tommen’s school, she asks herself why she is pursuing her gut feeling to the exclusion of most other lines of inquiry. What her gut suspects ( _knows_ ) is true might not even be relevant to the case in hand. She is certain she stumbled across the secret at the heart of the Lannister family, yet she is unsure what to do with it, if she _is_ right. 

Brienne’s stomach clenches when she thinks of the children, sullen Joffrey, sweet Myrcella, missing Tommen. Even as she struggles to get her feelings under control, she grapples with why she feels the way she feels, why she is even looking into the possibility that Cersei Baratheon’s children were fathered by her twin brother. Brienne is supposed to find little Tommen and get him back alive, not build a case against the Lannister twins on a charge of incest. Incest and possible conspiracy to commit murder, if Robert Baratheon’s death was not accidental. Does she really want to open that can of worms? The press would have a field day, and the children would suffer the most. Myrcella and Tommen would have to go to a foster home, probably be separated, definitely be paraded before the world as monsters, through no fault of their own. That is, if Tommen is still alive and can be found…

Brienne clenches her teeth against the image of a small body on an autopsy table, which intrudes before her mind’s eye, obscuring all else. She focuses on Tommen, finding Tommen, Tommen alive and smiling and happy, while she questions his teachers, his friends, his friends’ parents. While she rummages through his school locker, finds notebooks, colored pens, a coin purse with a picture of a tabby cat, a blue plastic comb. 

She stares at the comb for several long moments but she has already made her decision, pulls an evidence bag out of her pocket, drops some blond hairs into it. 

Back at the station, she bribes her friend Pod in forensics to do a rush job on the hairs, off the record. Pod is not happy about breaking protocol, but Brienne promises she will owe him a big one, and that she does not intend to use the findings in any official investigation, she is just curious about something. 

As she leaves work after saying goodnight to Pod, she realizes she told him the truth. She is not going to use the results of Tommen’s DNA profile, unless they turn out to be directly relevant to his disappearance. Even then, she will try and bury this, not allow a child’s suffering to become a ghoulish media circus if it can be helped. 

There are many reasons why the thought of Cersei and Jaime Lannister together makes her want to squirm. 

Incest is against the law. 

It has historically proven to be a bad idea, and surely the almost universal taboo against it is no accident. 

It has medical consequences for its offspring, though the three Baratheon children seem healthy enough. 

Especially over such an extended period of time, it indicates psychological issues Brienne does not even wish to ponder. ( _They are twins, after all. It must be like fucking a mirror. And really, how stupid and uncaring – or how conceited – do you have to be to allow all three of your children to be conceived that way?_ ) 

She feels completely unwarranted jealousy at the thought of Jaime Lannister pleasuring his sister. 

In the end, she decides it is not about the fact that the Lannisters broke the law or that their relations violate Brienne’s personal code of ethics. It is about her need to _know_. Not just in her gut, and not so that the truth will out. She is neither a knight to tilt at windmills, nor a private investigator to chase down dubious paternity claims. No, the truth has weight. It has presence, even if nobody ever acknowledges it or speaks it out loud. Brienne would rather shoulder the burden of knowing than break her heart with what-ifs.

The following morning, Pod’s preliminary report waits on her desk. She barely has time to skim it when she gets a call that one Jaime Lannister is waiting at the front desk, and wants to speak to her. 

She comes downstairs to the lobby and sees him standing there, completely at ease in his dark wool coat, master of all he surveys. All of Brienne’s hard-won equanimity abandons her. She is suddenly angry. She wants to bury her fingers in his hair, in his chest, see what beats in there, what kind of heart. Is it simple arrogance which led him to believe that nobody would ever figure it out? Is it some kind of gigantic bluff, trusting the world to be too self-absorbed to pay attention? Or is it simpler and worse than that – did he never actually stop to think about the consequences of his actions? 

“My sister informs me that you have been asking questions about her late husband,” he tells Brienne without preamble. “This will stop immediately. You are meant to be finding Tommen, not digging into what happened to Robert nearly three years ago. Cersei does not need all that dredged up at a time like this.” 

_This is a man who has been choosing to sleep with his sister for the last twenty years_ , Brienne thinks. _Maybe longer. And was content to let a man he despises raise his children._ She wonders briefly if he ever considered posing as Cersei’s husband himself, somewhere far away, realizes that the question is pointless. There are no good outcomes to this story. 

“Is that all, Mr. Lannister?” she asks, perfectly calm in the knowledge which rests on her desk, inside the manila folder Pod left for her. “Tell me, did Mrs. Baratheon count on my being so blinded by your beauty I would actually do as she says? Or so blindsided by this display of familial self-righteousness I would forget that it is my job to get to the bottom of this?”

Jaime Lannister is staring at her, his expression different from its usual haughtiness. It begins as assessing and ends as something else: admiring. 

Brienne is mildly impressed with herself: apparently being riled by this man brings out her eloquent streak. “Perhaps there was something else you wanted to tell this morning?” she says. “Perhaps you have had time to rethink your alibi for the morning of Tommen’s disappearance.”

“What are you fishing for, detective? I told you, I went for a drive.”

“I could waste time getting a court order to check the GPS in your car, but instead I am just going to ask you: is your silly alibi supposed to cover up the fact that you are carrying on a sexual relationship with your sister? Is that where you were that morning? With her?”

The lobby of the police station is always crowded, yet there is a bubble of silence around the two of them. They might be the only two people in the world. Brienne is acutely aware of everything: her breathing, her pulse, the way Jaime Lannister’s mouth tightens, caught between a grimace and a smirk. _This is it_ , she thinks. _This is how wars begin, how people make choices that change their whole lives. Others’ lives, too. In still, silent moments like this._

His lips finally stretch into a smile, eyes aglitter with danger and an odd sort of invitation. Come closer and see how sharp my teeth are. “You have evidence for these insinuations?” he asks silkily. “Or are you just _gagging_ for a libel suit?”

Brienne breathes deeply. Even without the DNA profile, she knows for certain now. Jaime Lannister must suck at poker. Brienne cannot imagine he would have the patience for it anyway – he must prefer games where he can run on grass, in the sun, wear shorts and occasionally headbutt someone. That, or games played between the sheets. With his sister. 

“Understand me,” she says, “I do not care about that, unless you were involved in your neph… in Tommen’s disappearance. So I ask again: were you?” He weighs her with his eyes, gives a minute shake of the head. “Then help me. If Tommen was taken by a stranger, chances are it is already too late. But if he was taken by someone he knows, someone who has an ulterior motive for the kidnapping, a motive that maybe has nothing to do with Tommen himself, there may still be time. Is there anyone, anyone you can think of who might want to do this to you, to your family?”

She can see him thinking, his green eyes unfocused as he genuinely reaches inside himself and reviews possibilities. Soul-searching must not be something Jaime Lannister does often. 

She wonders what he would tell her if she asked him why. Why his sister, why for such a long time, why children, why arrange their lives in the way they did? Not that it really matters. Brienne meant what she said: she will not dine out on what she knows about the Lannister family, no matter how much disgust and frustration she might feel. As a willful outsider to their situation, she does not get the luxury of asking why. 

And anyway, it is so easy to find reasons, justifications, excuses for the things you know you should not do. Brienne has heard it a million times in suspects’ confessions. 

Suddenly she is aware of his intense scrutiny. Jaime is staring at her like she is the answer to all of life’s questions. It is more than a little disconcerting, given what Brienne has just been thinking about. 

He says only one word. “Hoat.” 

It takes Brienne a moment to realize he is talking about a person. She takes him upstairs to her squad room, takes down details, sends out uniforms to find the men Jaime named. 

Hoat. Rorge. Shagwell. Zollo. _They even have villains’ names_ , Brienne thinks. A nasty gang of hired thugs with a grudge against Lannister Inc., going back to the days when Jaime’s late father occasionally solved business disputes by having his off-the-books employees break a few kneecaps or terrorize a few wives. So, Cersei Baratheon was closest to the mark. She merely overestimated the eminence of the persons who took Tommen over an issue with money owed, Lannister Sr. refusing to feed his dogs after they had served him faithfully enough for years. One more piece of the Lannisters’ dirty laundry Brienne will not air out herself, if she can help it. If only these men do have Tommen, and he is still alive and unharmed. 

They find Shagwell first, a ratty little man with a nervous giggle that puts Brienne’s back up. It takes her less than a quarter of an hour in the interrogation room with him to get him to turn on his associates. As she rushes to her car, she sees Cersei Baratheon in the corridor outside the squad room, sobbing in her brother’s arms. Jaime catches Brienne’s eye as she passes, and she gestures for him to stay with his sister.

Shagwell directed them to a disused warehouse in the middle of a decaying industrial zone on the edge of the city. No security, no one who might call the police around. Brienne is among the first officers in, shoots one of the men they find inside when he tries to use his own weapon against her. The cavernous echoing of bullets, shouts and screams follows her down the corridor to the back of the damp, smelly warehouse, to a small room with boarded-up windows and smashed lights. 

“Tommen?” Brienne calls out, her gun at the ready. “Tommen, are you in there?”

“Hello?” a child’s voice pipes from the dark room, thin with fright, and Brienne nearly slumps against the wall in relief.

“Tommen, my name is Brienne, I’m a police officer. I’m here to take you home,” she says, peering into the room. In defiance of all protocol and reason, she holsters her gun and takes off her bulletproof vest, drops it on the floor. The boy is frightened enough. 

She hazards a step into the room, lets her eyes adjust to the darkness. “Those men who were here, they’re gone. Are you hurt?”

He is sitting on a camping bed without a mattress, just the metal frame, dressed in the clothes he wore when he was taken, his round face grimy and tear-stained. He shakes his head, he is not injured. 

Brienne smiles, squats, opens her arms. “Will you come to me, Tommen? I’ll take you to your mommy.” She will not touch him until he allows it. 

Much faster than she would have expected from such a chubby boy, he is off the bed and in her arms. His arms and legs cling to Brienne like limpets, and he sobs into her shoulder. She strokes his curls as she lifts him onto her hip, whispers to him to keep his eyes closed. Covers his eyes with one of her hands, just in case, lest he see the bloodstains on the floor where Brienne’s bullet exploded Rorge’s kneecap or where Zollo took two to the chest. She hopes the boy does not remember the smell of gunpowder on her hands.

Later, Brienne will see the photograph of herself carrying Tommen out of the warehouse in the paper. She will not be able to escape the thought that, with his face hidden by her shoulder and hand, the tender way she held him, her blond hair and his, they might look like a mother with her child. She will hate the thwarted, restless feeling ( _longing_ ) that thought will plant in her, like an unpleasant taste she cannot get out of her mouth. 

In the moment, though, Brienne sees only the intense light of day after the darkness inside the warehouse, the police cars, the ambulances, the red and blue lights, Cersei Baratheon’s hair catching the sun like spun gold as she tears herself from Jaime’s arms and rushes up, shoving a paramedic out of the way, to take Tommen out of Brienne’s arms. Brienne lets her, stands there as though drunk for a few moments before she makes herself move to where Rorge and his men are being loaded into ambulances or squad cars, where a body bag is being zipped over Zollo’s slack-jawed face. She realizes she left her bulletproof vest in the warehouse, heads back for it, resolutely ignoring the sound of Cersei’s tears and Tommen’s sobs, the feeling of Jaime’s eyes on the back of her neck. 

The next time Brienne sees Tommen is the day he is due to testify against his abductors. He is flanked by his mother and Jaime, his sister and even his older brother. He is wearing a suit that looks handmade (if Brienne knows Cersei, it is), and his face lights up when he spots Brienne. 

She is not supposed to be there, she already testified. But she wanted to see how Tommen was doing, and her captain allowed it, albeit shaking his head at Brienne’s reputation for becoming emotionally involved in cases. Thinking about a certain manila folder she threw in the garbage incinerator in her apartment building, Brienne wisely did not point out just how involved she became in this particular case. _At least I am on top of my paperwork_ , she thinks wryly. 

Tommen is eager to tell her about everything he has been doing since he returned home, about what his school friends had to say about his abduction, about his cat having kittens while he was gone, and how he wanted to bring a blue-eyed kitten for Brienne, but his mother would not let him. Cersei smiles through all this with a barely tolerant expression, while Myrcella looks happy to listen to her baby brother chatter. Joffrey looks away, bored, and Jaime watches Brienne. She does not look at him, focuses on answering Tommen’s eager questions: he will have to wait a few years if he wants to become a police officer like her, and yes he would then get to chase bad guys.

“As if they’d ever let someone as fat and slow as you into the police,” Joffrey pipes up in a voice which is a reedy version of Jaime’s drawl. “You couldn’t even escape those men who took you, you little baby.” 

It is the first thing Joffrey has said to anyone since they arrived. Brienne stares at him, at the way he eyeballs the cringing, sniffling Tommen, the way he waves away his mother’s gentle scolding and stalks off, a bored cat among unsuspecting pigeons. 

She is still looking after Joffrey when Cersei speaks to no one in particular: “We should really go. Come along, Tommen.”

It does not escape Brienne that Cersei never thought to thank her for finding her son or getting him back safe. She looks at Tommen, finds solace in his expression of sad longing while he looks up at her. 

“If your mother agrees, Tommen, I should dearly like to give you a hug,” she says, feeling bold. 

Tommen’s face lights up, his firefly moods winking on and off, and he nods so vigorously his mother agrees even though she would obviously rather not. 

Brienne kneels on the floor, ignoring Cersei’s scandalized eye-roll, and envelops Tommen in her arms for the second and last time. He squeezes her neck almost painfully. She can feel Cersei and Jaime’s eyes on her, so she closes her eyes and breathes in the smell of Tommen’s hair.

“You would make a wonderful policeman,” she whispers so only he can hear, and as she says it she realizes it is the sort of thing one says to children, but also true. The urge to snatch Tommen up and take him away with her washes over Brienne with such force it robs her of breath. She has to make herself loosen her grip on the boy and stand up. She tells herself sternly she will not cry as Cersei leads Tommen and Myrcella away, and she is left alone with Jaime. 

“How is he doing, really?” Brienne asks, looking after Tommen. 

Jaime half sighs, half snorts. “Cersei took him to some overpriced child psychologist who claims he’s fine, he doesn’t remember almost anything of what happened. And he wasn’t injured, not really. So…” He trails off, shrugs when Brienne looks at him, as though to say he is not entirely happy about it but it is not his, Jaime’s, call. He is not, after all, Tommen’s father, not so far as that psychologist and the world are concerned. 

“He remembers it,” Brienne says softly. 

She knows she is on very thin ice here. Sympathizing with victims of crime is one thing, identifying with them is something much more dangerous for people in her profession. Yet she cannot help the kinship she feels with Tommen. When something bad happens to children but they are not physically harmed, it is so easy to assume they will be fine, they are young and will grow up and forget. But they are not and they do not. She knows. _Maybe Tommen has not been all right since the day he was born_ , she thinks, then immediately pushes the thought away. She decided not to pursue the issues around which the Lannister family revolves, so she does not get to go over that patch of ground again. Even though she knows she will, late at night, with a pillow pressed to her stomach and tears streaming down her face. 

“You’re right, he probably does,” Jaime’s voice intrudes on her thoughts. “But he’s young. He’ll be fine.”

Brienne cringes, turns to face him. She knows what she is about to say is terrible, does not care. She wants to hurt Jaime Lannister, wants to see his mask of cool superiority slip. She saw it that day in the lobby of the police station, when he looked at her like she was a surprise and a challenge. Right now, she will settle for getting _any_ reaction out of him.

“You know, Joffrey has all the hallmarks of a sociopath.” Brienne imagines her words are knives, scalpels, each sharp and precise as it goes into Jaime’s flesh. “I saw it when I interviewed him, I saw it again today. In two or five or ten years, I’ll be arresting him for sure. But Tommen and Myrcella are lovely, they really are. So I guess you’ve beaten the odds. Or I should say, your sister has, since she is the one actually raising them. Well done. You must be very proud of yourself.” 

She strides out of the courthouse, her blood strumming in her veins, her skin tingling like she has an allergy. She wishes she could get into her car and drive off, leaving Jaime Lannister to breathe her exhaust fumes. She wishes he would catch up with her and cut her with words of his own. 

She is putting on her seat belt when his open hand thumps against her car window, hard enough to make her jump, not hard enough to crack the glass. “Fuck you!” he shouts. “Who are you to judge me?” She stares straight ahead, and he thumps the glass again. 

Brienne hits the inside of the window before she looks at him, absorbs his glare and returns a glare of her own. He is breathing heavily, and she half expects him to open the door and drag her out of the car. Her hand smarting from the impact, she nearly opens the door herself. What stops her is the blindingly clear realization that only one of two things can happen if she does get out of the car: either she will pound Jaime Lannister’s face against the concrete of the courthouse parking lot ( _he would never be pretty for his sister again_ ) or they will crawl into the back seat of her car and fuck right there, in full view of everyone ( _her heels up on the seatbacks, him thrusting like it’s the last fuck the universe will ever see_ ). 

She stabs the key into the ignition, wishing she could draw blood from her car, makes a right turn out of the parking lot faster than is wise. She does not look at Jaime in the rearview mirror, concentrates on keeping her hands steady on the steering wheel while her teeth chatter with adrenaline. 

He is there for Rorge and Hoat’s sentencing, sitting next to Cersei. _At least they did not bring the children_ , Brienne thinks. She is not really surprised when she sees Cersei speaking to journalists afterward, the mother expressing her relief and righteous anger, but Jaime stands to the side, watching the door. Moves when he sees Brienne leave the courthouse, makes a beeline for the parking lot. 

They end up in the bar of a downtown hotel. After his second scotch and without her needing to ask, Jaime tells Brienne about the first time he had sex with Cersei as a teenager, and how it continued, with breaks for childbirth, the early years of her marriage, his extended foreign trips. Even longer than Brienne thought, nearly thirty years. He does not talk about Robert Baratheon’s death, and Brienne does not ask.

 _This is impossible_ , Brienne thinks while his voice twines around her like choking ivy, like caressing leaves. _Say even that they have not touched since Tommen was born. He is there, on the family wall in that house, where Robert Baratheon (did_ he _know? did he?) never was, even if he is also apart from them, always the uncle, the one who doesn’t get to make big life decisions or hug them after they’ve been kidnapped. He is not independent of them. He cannot be, with children involved. Thirty years._

Jaime is watching her, knows she owes him a story of her own. So she tells him about Arya Stark, and Goodwin, and dead babies, and how you never forget the first one. 

“I had a brother.” Brienne stares at the ice melting in her glass. “Galladon.” She cannot remember his face except the way it looks on the photographs on her father’s mantelpiece, but still her throat closes around the sound of his name. That is how she knows Tommen is not all right, will never be all right. Because she is not. “He drowned in the swimming pool when he was eight and I was four. I never told Goodwin that. I never told anyone. But. Galladon was my first dead baby.” 

She looks at Jaime, sees pity and sympathy and kinship in his eyes. They lend her the courage to say what needs to be said: “We are not going to see each other after tonight.”

He knows, but he asks why anyway. 

“There’s a story,” Brienne says, “about a corrupt official who went to a sage and offered him to take part in a scheme, promising no one would ever know. ‘How can you say that?’ the sage replied. ‘I know, and you know, and the earth knows, and the sky knows.’” She gulps melted ice, cannot bear the weight of Jaime’s gaze just then. “Nobody will ever find out about Cersei and the children from me, but you know, and I know. And I can’t pretend I don’t know.” 

For a moment, she can almost see herself doing it anyway, telling herself she would not dwell on things she had decided not to pursue, things she could not change. Seizing what she can get with both hands, shouldering the burden of Jaime’s choices, living with them. She can almost see herself doing it, but the woman she imagines does not have Brienne’s face, is no one she recognizes. 

She really should not go to a room in that hotel with him. She can think of several reasons ( _excuses, justifications_ ) why she does, and she knows her reasons are paltry things, wispy as air, but she does it anyway. 

She leaves scratch marks on Jaime’s shoulders, pulls his hair in her fervor. His fingers bruise her soft parts. He fucks her as she imagined it in the parking lot, so she will feel him between her thighs for days to come. They fuck for anger, for desire, for something different, for gratitude, for the fact that they both want to. 

Afterward, Brienne kisses him like she has never quite dared kiss anyone before, long and slow and like they did not steal this time, a brief carnival during which the rules are overturned and what they do has no bearing on their lives, their choices and selves negated. Nobody knows ( _the earth knows, the sky knows_ ) how they kiss for hours, kiss each other all over, and come back again and again to lips and tongues and breaths. To murmured words, not promises, just words for that moment. 

Brienne knows there will be times, many times she suspects, when a bad case, a bad day, a child’s body on the autopsy table will make her want to go to Jaime’s house, ring the doorbell without checking if he is alone, wonder where he is if he is not there. But she will never do it. She sucks his lower lip to make him moan, kisses him so he knows how many times she will want to come to his door, and not do it. 

Much later, the window colorless with dawn, Brienne feels Jaime begin to cry against her shoulder, wet and silent, the way a man cries. She holds him and strokes his hair and lets him cry, though she herself does not. She can carry this, his sorrow, her knowledge, but she strongly suspects that what-ifs will break her heart regardless. 

She will cry when she is alone in her home, maybe the following night, maybe in a week, maybe in a year. For Galladon, for Arya Stark, for Tommen. For herself and for him. For lives unlived and the choices by which they live. Something not quite beginning, something which cannot end.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic now has a [sequel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/975364).


End file.
